LETS-COM 2: Business as Usual

Well. Let’s have a look at who we’ve got hanging around the base at the moment.

Dan is in the hospital for the next little while.

As is Kyle. It seemed appropriate.

High Aim, Low Will. That seems about right.

Greg, having goodwill from the previous game kind of won the stat lottery. He also gets a hat, the best addition new to XCOM. The next expansion should just be 100 additional hats.

Nice and Decent.

Ditto.

This hat was too appropriate to not use.

All this low-will is making me nervous for later.

At least when you panic you won’t be able to hit anything.

So we REALLY need the Iron Will perk early this game.

Because we are not doing so good on the will side of things.

Well, hopefully the random level points will be helpful.

Going to need that steam sooner than I’d like, so we start digging out the base.

We’re going to have to choose this one blind, since they wont let us in the situation room yet.

I’m not sure the squad is up to difficult just yet, plus scientists are not what I want.

Welp, unless the next one has a serious panic rating, guess we’re going to China. I hate to let the US go to a four already, but scientists…

Off to China it is. I miss the random rewards second wave option already, as it could have made these interesting choices.

An interesting choice is now. Who the frell do I bring on this mission? All rookies? Should I risk my high stat troops or risk failing the mission with my low stat mooks? Do I bring along Greg, he’s going to be a phenomenal sniper assuming I can get him leveled up to squad sight. Wait, am I actually going to get squad sight at corporal… there’s a terrifying thought.

Sometimes it’s the little improvements that make the expansion worth every penny. We can now see what people have equipped without having to inspect them. So useful. We can take all the equipment off everyone not in the squad so you don’t have to spend five minutes playing equipment musical chairs anymore.

Pretty sure I haven’t been here before.

Certainly don’t remember it. Yay new maps!

And we’ve found a meld container already.

This is an entirely wise decision. I dare you to say otherwise.

We’ve also spotted the other container.

See? Everything’s fine.

And there’s lots of time to go fetch the other one.

Which we manage without incident. Huzzah. And we get the greatest of all treasures, spotting a group before they spot us.

I’m going to be sad when these stop being ridiculously effective.

And it looks like sectoids are running around in groups of two, which is a nice bonus.

You’ll note that the meld canister was brilliantly placed so as to put my squad in the most disadvantageous part of the map. Lower elevation and easily flankable cover makes this a literal kill-box.

And here’s some friends to help us out in that regard.

Wow, this is way better odds than I was expecting.

The outcome however, is anything but unexpected.

Gotta love misses. Mind you he’s about half a meter away from flanking both me and Greg.

Grenades are just so good against sectoids, and the linkage means I’ll even get some fragments out of the deal.

Wee. Add one bulldozer to the XCOM kill list.

Now to just get out of this pit…. Oh come on!

I actually want to shoot these ones, because we are going to need some weapon fragments in the near future.

It’s just a pity that Jared is in the absolute worst place to be taking potshots.

Jared falls back and the rest of us sit around waiting for something to happen.

I was under the impression I actually had a half-decent aim score.

No matter, Greg got it,

Good news everyone, no moving!

Whiff.

Additional Whiff.

Whiffity Whiff Whiff.

Current XCOM Longest Miss Streak: 4.

Remember kids, even the cement mixing portion of a cement truck is extremely volatile and liable to explode if shot.

Yay. We managed to do half decently on that mission.

And so far we haven’t missed any meld.

Well, damn. I was kind of hoping someone would make it to Corporal.

+4 will, +1 aim. Grrr…

+6 Will +5 Aim, that’s more like it. Although it looks like health points are randomly allocated as well. That could become an issue.

Woo! We all survived our first (named) mission! Too bad I had to give up the long hair when signing up for round 2. On the plus side, they’re letting me keep my cap as long as I wear it sideways and call it a beret! So what’s this orange glowy stuff we’re picking up here?